Most ideas that fail do not fail because they are bad. They fail because they are not yet
ideas. They are a situation, an image, or a character, and none of those on its own generates a
film.
Test 1: can you say it in one sentence that creates a question?
Not a summary. A sentence that makes a listener want to know what happens.
A man discovers his memories are false is a situation. A man with no short term memory hunts
his wife's killer using tattoos and notes is a film, because it immediately raises a question you
want answered.
If your one sentence requires a second sentence to make sense, keep compressing until it does
not.
Test 2: is there a reason this happens now?
Why today rather than last year or next year? Something must have changed to make the story
start. Ideas without an ignition point tend to drift, because nothing forces the first scene to
lead to the second.
Test 3: can you name three escalating complications?
Each worse than the last, each caused by the one before. If you can name three quickly, the
premise generates story. If you struggle past one, you may have an opening rather than a film.
This is the most reliable of the six, and the one writers most often skip because the answer
can be discouraging.
Test 4: who suffers if the protagonist succeeds?
Every strong premise has someone whose interests are directly opposed. If nobody loses when
your protagonist wins, there is no natural opposition and you will be manufacturing conflict for
two hours, which audiences feel even when they cannot name it.
Test 5: what is the worst thing that could happen to this character specifically?
Not generically bad. Bad for them, given who they are. A story is usually the process of doing
exactly that to someone. If you cannot answer, you may not know your character well enough for
the idea to be testable yet.
Test 6: why you?
The least technical and most predictive. What do you understand about this that another writer
would not? Scripts that survive the years they take are usually the ones where the writer had
something they needed to work out. Competence alone does not sustain a draft through the middle.
Passing and failing
Passing all six does not mean the film will work. It means the premise is load bearing enough
to build on, which is all you can know at this stage.
Failing several does not mean abandon it. It usually means the idea is not finished. Most
failures are diagnosable: no ignition point, no opposition, no escalation. Each of those is a
fixable gap rather than a verdict.
The question people actually mean
When writers ask whether an idea is good, they usually mean is it worth my time, and beneath
that, will I be embarrassed. Neither is answerable in advance.
What is answerable is whether the premise can generate a screenplay. That is a mechanical
question with mechanical tests, and it is the useful one to ask first.
Originally published at https://www.moviementors.ai/answers/is-my-movie-idea-good.html.
Written by the team behind Movie Mentors.
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